


Cloves and Heliotropes

by Eristastic



Series: Under(fairy)tales [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Character Study, Other, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 11:03:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6076977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eristastic/pseuds/Eristastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't be afraid of the woods, my child, but fear the beast within.</p><p> </p><p>[Little Red Riding Hood AU, because why not at this point]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cloves and Heliotropes

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for dependency and kind of unhealthy relationships, although it's left ambiguous as to how unhealthy
> 
> 'Cover page' can be found [here](http://eristastic.tumblr.com/post/144048295732/kind-of-cover-pages-for-my-fics-cloves-and).

 

It started out as a whisper in the darkest part of the woods.

Asriel shivered, but he’d been walking these woods his whole life so he knew there was no reason to be afraid. More to the point, he was practically an adult now. He couldn’t go around being scared by spooky noises.

Even so, he jumped when it came again.

“Hello?” he called, in what he hoped was a strong, confident-sounding voice (he knew it wasn’t).

There was laughter, like the breath of a breeze, but no reply. He listened, holding himself so still that he didn’t even dare to breathe, but he couldn’t hear a thing. So, sheepishly, he started walking again, cringing at every crunch of leaf or branch under his feet.

It came again a few minutes later, from his other side this time.

“Who’s there?”

Rather than whispers and mere shadows of laughter, he heard someone chuckle from behind him. He whirled around, hands clutching at the bag slung around one shoulder (not that its contents would help him: flowers and snails are not commonly known for their usefulness in a fight), but there was no one there.

Of course there was no one there. The path he was on was a constant set of hairpin turns down the hill, surrounded by thick pine trees. It might well be laid out in sand, but there were branches and needles and pinecones littering the ground: there was no way he wouldn’t have heard someone following him.

And then they laughed again and he felt it as if the sound was crawling down his spine.

“Who are you?!” He was just a little panicked now, hunching up into the red cloak Chara had knitted for him (badly: missed stitches everywhere, but still comforting).

“You can hear me can’t you?” said the voice. Completely unnecessarily, it seemed to Asriel, considering how he was reacting.

But he answered anyway. “Where are you?”

“Oh, I’m around. Here and” –it was suddenly far behind him– “here, too. Lots of places. Wherever I want, really. But this is just perfect! I’ve been waiting so long for you to hear me.”

Asriel had jumped when the voice moved, and he had to stop himself from backing to the very edge of the path, to where there was a steep drop until the path twisted around again. He tried to think about this logically and while, granted, that wasn’t the easiest thing to do when no one should have been in this part of the woods with him (no one should even know about it, it was so far out of the way), he tried anyway. A few deep breaths, enough to get his heartrate down.

“Chara, if this is a joke, it’s really not that funny,” he said with a lot of faked confidence. It wasn’t them (he knew there was no way it could be them), but he couldn’t think of anyone else who would do this.

There was a small pause and then the voice was laughing, laughing, roaring unkindly and the sound made Asriel want to run. He dug his heels into the ground, trying to ignore how unpleasant the voice felt as it dripped down his back.

“Oh, that’s just _wonderful_!” it cooed. “Here I thought little old me would have to bring up the subject, and you do it for me! Well, that sure makes things easier.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying. I really don’t get any of this…” Laughing made it easier, so he laughed lightly and tried to keep walking down the path.

It was like his legs wouldn’t let him.

“Do you not?” the voice asked, suddenly all sugar and cream and not grating down his eardrums. “Do you want me to spell it out for you? The reason you’ve been so restless lately. So…easily distracted.”

Asriel froze. “…what…? H-how do you know about that?”

“Oh, I’m sorry! After all, it’s just,” –the voice changed again, to something deeper and warmer and…motherly…– “all that energy that growing boys have, is it not?”

It was his mother’s voice, his mother’s words, and then it was only the unpleasant sound of a smirk.

“Did you really believe her when she said that?”

“You don’t know anything.”

“Actually, I know everything, you _idiot_.”

Asriel wasn’t confrontational: he hadn’t been as a kid and he’d kept that as he’d grown older, and he knew that this wouldn’t be solved by getting angry and losing his head.

That didn’t mean it was any less humiliating, jog-running away down the path, pretending he couldn’t hear the voice taunting him from the side, behind, in front, everywhere, like this was some kind of game to it.

It wasn’t a game. It was something he didn’t even want to think about.

 

When he got back home, he didn’t say anything. He gave his mother the snails, bending down to let her kiss him on the cheek, and trooped into the room he and Chara shared. They were lying on the bed reading, as usual, and didn’t look at him when he came in.

“Hey.”

They grunted back, waving a little as they flipped the page. That was normal, that was comfortable, and it felt like it was grounding him so he let himself sink onto his own bed, sliding the cloak and bag off. After some very careful digging around in the bag (he knew he’d crushed too many things with those ‘massive fingers’ of his already, as Chara was always so quick to remind him), he pulled the flowers out. They were still tied in a short length of twine, and he quickly spruced up the lace-thin red petals.

“Here.” He held them out.

Chara looked over at him and grinned. They slipped in a ragged bookmark to keep their page, then rolled off the bed and straightened up to take the flowers.

“Where did you get _these_?” they asked, and Asriel could see right away how pleased they were (he loved it: he loved the way their eyes lit up). “Cloves aren’t common around here.”

“Oh, just around, you know.” He might have been preening a little but Chara didn’t mention it. They were too busy getting a mug out of the cupboard they kept specifically for holding all their makeshift vases.

They hummed in a vaguely interested way but didn’t say anything, so he decided he couldn’t be risking much by at least hinting at the…the issue.

“I was in the old woods,” he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

They snorted, and it shouldn’t have sounded as endearing as it did. “Of course you were. Nobody ever goes there but you.”

“Haha, yeah, about that. Um. There was someone there, this afternoon.”

“What, really?” They turned around from pouring water into the mug. “That’s weird.”

“Sure was. And, um…” He was fiddling with the bedsheets, eyes glued to the objectively uninteresting floorboards. “I didn’t…I didn’t see them, exactly, but it was…”

“Wait a second: are you _scared_?”

He didn’t look up to check if they were grinning with glee or actually sympathetic. “Nah. I mean, it was kind of unnerving at the time, but it’s not like I’m _scared_ or anything…” To prove how not-scared he was, he looked up to meet their eyes.

They were smiling, but it wasn’t mocking. He didn’t think he could have torn his eyes away if he’d wanted to.

“Ree, if something scared you out there, I can go back with you to check it out.”

“Really?” It came out a little desperate-sounding, so he coughed before saying, “Uh, that is, why? Usually you’d just say it was a pain. And you know Mum doesn’t want you to go that far from the house.”

“Well, it is a pain,” they shrugged. “But Toriel worries too much: I just want to stretch my legs a little, and I’ve been cooped up for weeks now.”

He nodded (maybe a little too needy, but Chara didn’t seem to notice) and agreed to ask his mother if they could go with him the next day.

 

For a long time, the woods were just as they usually were. Chara was still somewhat weak on their legs so the two of them took it slowly, wandering through the barely-there trails hidden under bracken and over the stone-like roots rising from the forest floor. Chara seemed to enjoy the walk too much to complain about not hearing any mysterious voices, so, their arms linked, the two of them just walked.

Asriel didn’t even have the presence of mind to be scared.

“Ugh, I’ve missed this,” Chara said out of the blue, even though they were usually so good with silence.

“Missed what?”

“Not being in the house, obviously. You have no idea what it’s like to be holed up for weeks. I think I’ve even been missing the village.” They said it with a touch of distaste, like the idea was inherently unpleasant to them.

And it should have been. Chara hated people, hated crowds. That was how it was supposed to be.

“You don’t really, though, do you?” Asriel asked, a little more nervously than might have been called for.

“Of course not.” They batted a branch away from their face.

Asriel nodded, smiling, but then Chara followed it up: “Well, I mean…”

“What? What do you mean?”

“It’s not like absolutely everyone is awful. Most of them are, don’t get me wrong, but let’s be fair here.”

He didn’t want to be fair, but he nodded anyway.

And then, slicing through the silence, there was the voice, gradually growing louder as if it had always been there: humming, this time, rather than laughing. Asriel froze in place and would have managed to trip Chara up if he hadn’t had the foresight to catch them (as if his heart wasn’t already pounding).

“What’s wrong?” they frowned.

He looked at them incredulously: how could they not hear it? It was everywhere: the infernal humming was melting into every leaf, every branch, into the very air so he had to breathe it in and feel it racketing and rumbling through his lungs.

“It’s…it’s nothing.”

They looked at him for a moment longer, shrugged, and pulled him onwards to the sound of the voice laughing at him.

“Honestly,” it said, “I don’t think I should even be surprised! Maybe I should be insulted? Or should I feel honoured that you had to bring back-up, your little bodyguard at your side? Which is it?”

He wanted to shout at it to shut up, but Chara was there, walking like nothing was wrong. He concentrated on the crackle of their footsteps and his much heavier ones beside them.

 “So let’s just be honest,” the voice drawled. “You weren’t that scared of me. You didn’t ask them out here for protection. So then, why _did_ you? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.”

He ignored it, blocking his ears and trying to hear only the sounds of them moving, the faint calls of birds and insects. Chara’s arm was deceptively cool against his own, but he knew he ran at a higher temperature than they did. He knew humans were more fragile, too, but that Chara was even more breakable than most. He knew…he…

He swallowed heavily as the wind picked up through the trees and they leaned into him. In other circumstances, he probably would have put his arm around their shoulders, but that would mean taking their arm out of his and he didn’t want to do that, no matter what.

No matter how the voice was leering and teasing him, laughing and mocking, swearing and growling as he kept ignoring it.

“You can’t escape it,” it told him. “They’ll find out what you’ve been doing. They’ll find out why. And goodness, what _will_ they do then?”

He ignored it, he ignored it, he ignored it, he ignored it.

“I bet they’ll hate you.”

He climbed over a fallen tree trunk and Chara climbed after him, wobbling and using his outstretched hands as support, jumping into his arms and staying there like they never would have done years ago.

“They’ll feel so betrayed, won’t they? And you know they can’t handle being betrayed.”

They walked steadily up the hairpin turns, Chara humming tunelessly, like they never did around anyone else.

“They’ll see you for what you are, and then they’ll never want to see you again.”

Chara had to take a minute to catch their breath at the top of the hill, still weak (so _fragile_ ), but they didn’t let go of Asriel’s hand once, smiling at him like they never did for anyone else.

“Just think: even right now, you’re throwing all of this away. I can’t believe you’re such an _idiot_.”

The trees opened up onto rocky moorland, leaving the voice behind, and Asriel finally felt like he could breathe.

When he looked at them, Chara had a small, knowing smile. “Feel better about it now? No creepy voices?”

He smiled back, nodding (what else could he do?), and they went back home. With any luck, they wouldn’t see the strain around his edges until he’d had a chance to collect himself.

 

“Are you…quite sure, my dear?” Toriel asked as she packed up a basket.

Asriel leant further back against the kitchen counter, hesitated for a second, and nodded. “I’m sure.”

“Only…it has been a very long time. I am certain they could not run into any harm from a quick walk to the village, or a short outing. Physically, they are almost as well as they were before.”

“I know, but it’s the psychological side of it, Mum. They still don’t want…” here, he hesitated again, before changing to a slightly smaller lie, “I don’t think it would be good for them just yet.”

“But they do seem to be beginning to resent me for keeping them in such close confinement for so long,” she said pointedly, wrapping up the lightest of the food and putting it on top of the heavier things already in the basket.

“They don’t, really they don’t!” He tried to sound soothing.

Toriel still looked dubious (not disbelieving, but dubious all the same), but she handed him the basket and sighed, just slightly.

“Well, I am sure you know what is best for them. But tell me as soon as they give any sign of wishing to return to normal, please.”

“I will, Mum. And I’ll get this to Dad as quick as I can.”

Apparently mollified, she patted his cheek and saw him off.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong. But there were good intentions behind it, so it wasn’t like it was Wrong, it was just a small wrong. A little deception. And it was all in Chara’s interest, otherwise he never would have done it in the first place.

They didn’t like other people: that much was common knowledge. ‘Other people’ were the reason they’d ended up bedridden for a week, barely able to eat, and he wasn’t going to forget that easily. It was for the best that they took a good long time before going back to the village. It was for the best that he kept lying to his mother, telling her that they needed more time. They would agree too, if he told them.

He just didn’t want to tell them.

“That’s just _sad_.”

The voice was in front of him this time, or at least it felt like it was. It was so difficult to tell. He held the basket closer, his cloak tighter, and tried to keep it out of his mind.

“You don’t really think you can escape me, do you? You’re such an idiot! I’m just telling you what you already know.”

He knew, he knew, of course he knew! He walked faster, crushing grass and leaves beneath his feet.

“The worst part is that that’s not all, is it? Given the chance, you’d go further. You’d take all their freedom from them, if it kept them close to you.”

“That’s not true!” he growled, howling to the trees.

“So you say. Oh, but _imagine_ : what if you could break their legs and keep them dependent on you? What if you could blind them and make them rely on you for everything? What if you could-”

“Stop!”

“Ah, but that’s my mistake, isn’t it?” The voice was light and fluffy, and suddenly it turned sour. “You _can_ do all that.”

“But I’m not going to! You’re so wrong: you don’t understand any of this.”

There was a snort of laughter. “Yeah, okay, fine. Like you haven’t entertained the idea.”

“I _haven’t_.”

The voice laughed.

He stopped at a small opening between trees; a clearing of grass and delicate purple flowers like a puddle in the middle of it. Breath heavy, he took a moment to calm himself. Acting on instinct, he picked a sprig of the flowers and tucked them into the basket, like an excuse for stopping. Something to show he had a reason, he hadn’t just been scared.

His heart was still racing.

“I think you should do it, you know,” the voice said pleasantly when he’d walked back into the trees, back to the path. “They’re never going to come to anything by themself. It’d probably be a kindness to make it so they could never leave you. Even if they wanted to.”

“Shut up.”

“And it’s not like you don’t want to, right? You like it when they rely on you, when they lean on you, when they touch you. You like it so much. You’re absolutely disgusting.”

He decided he wouldn’t retaliate, he wouldn’t say anything. It felt like his blood was boiling and writhing through his veins at every word the voice was saying, but he wouldn’t lose his head. He couldn’t. He kept walking.

“Or maybe that’s the problem,” the voice said lazily, like it was taking its sweet time thinking everything out. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it is! You’re _so_ disgusting, aren’t you? Those gross thoughts, those gross feelings you’ve got going on…Gosh, I don’t envy you them at all! Hey, what’s it like, feeling yourself turn into something you hate?”

He wanted Chara with him: he wanted to have them to concentrate on, or even have anything else to concentrate on that wasn’t the voice, but this was a path he’d been walking for years. There was nothing new, nothing interesting, and he couldn’t block the words out.

It didn’t help that they were all true. It was like his very muscles were straining to hit something, to make the voice _stop_.

“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? That everyone’s scared of them because they’re so unstable, but really they’re just a helpless little lamb compared to you. You could break them whenever you wanted to. But you don’t want that. You want something even worse. You want them all to yourself, bound to you forever. You’re _disgusting_.”

Lights were flashing in the corners of his eyes, explosions of black and white too fleeting for him to catch. There was something thick in his throat, choking his breath, but his legs wouldn’t stop moving and all the while his hands were shaking, trembling with strength he wanted to use.

It wasn’t normal! He’d never felt like this, never felt this rage, this hatred before! It was like he could feel his horns growing longer, his body growing larger, his…his teeth sharpening into fangs to cut his bottom lip…He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t-!

“How’s that feel? A bit more like the repulsive beast you are? Gosh, I can feel my stomach turning just looking at you!” The sing-song voice echoed in his ears far too loudly: pulsating sound that rose up above even the pounding of his blood. “But, well, I guess that’s for the best, isn’t it? I’m just trying to help, after all! I’m just trying to show you what you could be.”

Everything was burning: he needed to leave, run from the shadows of the woods and break out into the sunlight, away from the voice. He was tearing through branches and bushes that he could barely see, terror eating into his bones and flesh like a fungus, but he could see brightness ahead of him – he knew it would be over soon, he just had to run!

“How long until just being their best friend isn’t enough for you?”

It was so unexpected that he stumbled, crashing out into the open. There were scrapes all over his body and he winced in pain when he tried to get up. The soles of his feet were cut, his fur had so many smears of mud and dirt on it that he couldn’t even imagine the fuss his mother was going to make…

The voice was gone, though. It hadn’t followed him like he’d been scared it might.

It took him half an hour before he managed to get up and brush himself down, back to the task he’d been set.

 

In the end, he took the long way home. His father usually kept him a long time, for catching up and chatting over tea, so it wasn’t like an extra twenty minutes would be noticed.

He didn’t want to think about it at all.

Chara was in the garden when he got back, reading under the oak tree with their legs curled up to their chest in that way that always made them cramp up because they’d be too absorbed in the book to relax. He sat down heavily on the grass next to them.

“You’re going to get grass stains on the cloak, you know,” they said mildly, putting the book down. “I didn’t spend weeks knitting that thing just so you could ruin it in half a year.”

“I’ll probably have grown out of it by then,” he pointed out, but dutifully took the cloak off and folded it.

“Ugh, don’t remind me. I’m making you a yellow one next.”

“Chara, that’s tasteless! Red’s bad enough. Anyway, look: I got you these.”

They took the flowers from him, smiling down at them. “Really, where do you _get_ these? I’ve never heard of heliotropes flowering around here.”

“Still the old woods.”

“Oh?” They raised an eyebrow (they’d practiced for weeks, a few years before, and now they could do it flawlessly). “Any more voices this time?”

“No.”

“Neat.” They admired the flowers a few moments more, then tucked them down beside them in the grass and picked their book up again.

“Uh…hey, Chara?”

“Yeah?” They didn’t look up.

“How have you been feeling, lately? I mean…you’ve recovered, right?”

“Of course I have. It’s just Toriel who thinks I need to rest more, for whatever reason.”

“Oh, okay.”

They went back to reading and he settled down beside them, his back pressing up against the tree trunk.

“Do you want me to talk to her about it?”

Chara paused. “Would you?”

“Yeah, of course I would…? Why would I not?” he laughed.

“Well, if you could, then. I’d like that.”

“Sure thing.” He tried not to sound nervous when he said it, but that wasn’t easy when they’d evidently decided that he was more comfortable than the tree and was snuggling up into his side, sending blood rushing right to his cheeks.

He thought he could hear the echoes of laughter in his ears.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> These are just turning into bizarre character studies now, but I'll try and make the next one more plot-based, if it happens.
> 
>  
> 
> Clove – unknown love, undying love/ Heliotrope – devotion  
> (And a lot of grass – submission, homosexual love, but that’s just coincidence. Flower languages are weird)


End file.
